


Surface Break

by Arsenic



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-08
Updated: 2007-04-08
Packaged: 2020-11-29 02:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20955230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Fragile





	Surface Break

**Author's Note:**

> Written for seanarenay's prompt in oxoniensis' Hugs, Kisses and Cuddles Fest.

Ryan knows what he looks like. Knows how wide his eyes always show up in film, how flimsy his wrists always appear. And all right, maybe the eye makeup wasn't the best idea to try and cover that up, try and distract people, but not all of Ryan's ideas can be good, and he has a pretty decent track record. The makeup works in other ways, so it's fine.

Still, he's never surprised when people read him wrong, when there's this expectation of him as Little Boy Lost, when he has to come back pretty hard and fast to get people to fuck the hell off.

Deep down inside, further even than the lyrics and the chords and the sound of Brendon's voice bringing all that together, underneath all that, Ryan is a realist. He just doesn't always like to admit it.

Ryan's good at knowing himself, at recognizing the contradictions, at making them apparent to others when given the chance.

He's not always good at knowing anybody else.

He thinks he should be. Ryan spent so, so long looking for the signs of a short fuse, of too much alcohol consumption. He should be able to read the human face, the human body like a fucking book, a newspaper, even. Spencer says--when he thinks Ryan isn't listening--that Ryan's already spent too much of his energies in that direction. Maybe he's right.

Probably he's right.

If Ryan doesn't know how to see the in between lines that people carry on themselves, though, he knows that he doesn't know how, which helps him to be wary.

Ryan is always perfectly, brilliantly wary until he most should be. It's always then that he forgets what the back of someone's hand feels like, particularly if one never sees it coming.

*

Gerard Way is like that. Gerard Way who wears enough of his heart on his sleeve for Ryan to see it fucking beating, and not enough for Ryan to figure out what's coming when he says, "Your lyrics make sense in my head."

As a come on line, it could use some work.

Ryan doesn't give a shit.

Ryan asks, "Yeah?" and when Gerard says, "Probably in all the wrong ways," Ryan lets Gerard buy him a coke.

Gerard uses comics to explain his points a lot, and Ryan's only read some of them and not in the dedicated way Gerard has obviously managed, so the conversation is a little obtuse, but Ryan sort of likes that. Body language is problematic, but Ryan doesn't mind mining words--trying to find how a person's mind comes together in Ryan's chosen art form.

Well, one of them.

At the end of the evening Gerard doesn't ask to kiss him like he could press in and Ryan wouldn't break, wouldn't shatter, he just does, and for the first time in a long time, Ryan remembers that everyone--even he--has those parts that could break if thrown or bent or simply vibrated in incorrect ways, at higher levels than the structure can stand.

Ryan still kisses back.

*

On the road, Gerard sends him MP3s and Ryan sends Gerard stills from comics that he knows he reads, has probably already seen, but they make sense between the two of them. Ryan keeps thinking something about the MP3s sounds familiar and finally he borrows Brendon's iPod--Brendon has all of My Chem, even back to the earliest stuff--and finds the similar rhythm that _I'm Not Okay (I Promise)_ carries to all of Gerard's wayward missives.

Ryan sends him a few MP3s with similar thematics to _Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks_.

When they see each other again, Gerard initiates things with a backrub, one deep enough to bruise. The good kind of bruising.

Ryan sucks him off by way of thanks, by way of "hello, it's been a while," by way of "this is what I want," and Gerard seems to know how to take it as all of those things, his hands firm but not forcing at the back of Ryan's head.

It is the lack of force, the presence of substance that breaks Ryan at Gerard's hands in ways that he had no idea he could be broken, thought himself long past. It is not an obvious fracture, not something just anyone would see, so when Gerard drags him up and holds his cock--holds it, doesn't rub or squeeze or jerk--and says, "Good to know it's not just me," Ryan gasps and comes without so much as a caress.

He spills over Gerard.


End file.
